Martin, who already had been doing a man's work, now assumed a man's responsibilities. Mrs. Wade consulted more and more with him, relied more and more upon his judgment. She was immensely proud of him, of his steadiness and dependability, but at rare moments, remembering her own normal childhood, she would think with compunction: “It ain't right. Young 'uns ought to have some fun. Seems like it's makin' him too old for his age.” She never spoke of these feelings, however. There were no expressions of tenderness in the Wade household. She was doing her best by her children and they knew it. Even Nellie, child that she was, understood the grimness of the battle before them. They were able to thresh enough wheat to repay their debt of six hundred bushels and keep an additional three hundred of seed for the following year. The remaining seven hundred and fifty they sold at twenty-five cents a bushel by hauling them to Fort Scott--thirty miles distant. Each trip meant ten dollars, but to the Wades, to whom this one hundred and eighty-seven dollars--the first actual money they had seen in over a year--was a fortune, these journeys were rides of triumph, fugitive flashes of glory in the long, gray struggle. That Fall they paid the first installment of two hundred dollars on their land and Martin persuaded his mother to give and Robinson to take a chattel on their two horses, old Brindle, her calf and the pigs, that other much-needed implements might be bought. Mrs. Wade toiled early and late, doing part of the chores and double her share of the Spring plowing that Martin, as well as Nellie, could attend school in Fallon. “I don't care about goin',” he had protested squirmingly. But on this matter his mother was without compromise. “Don't say that,” she had commanded, her voice shaken and her eyes bright with the intensity of her emotion; “you're goin' to get an education.” And Martin, surprised and embarrassed by his mother's unusual exhibition of feeling, had answered, roughly: “Aw, well, all right then. Don't take on. I didn't say I wouldn't, did I?” He was twenty-three and Nellie sixteen when, worn out and broken down before her time, her resistance completely undermined, Mrs. Wade died suddenly of pneumonia. Within the year Nellie married Bert Mall, Peter's eldest son, and Martin, at once, bought out her half interest in the farm, stock and implements, giving a first mortgage to Robinson in order to pay cash. “I'm making it thirty dollars an acre,” he explained. “That's fair,” conceded the banker, “though the time will come when it will be cheap at a hundred and a half. There's coal under all this county, millions of dollars' worth waiting to be mined.” “Maybe,” assented Martin, laconically.